The Dark Side of Religion

Morris (Raphael) Cohen (1880-1947)

This essay appeared first in the symposium volume, Religion Today, a Challenging
Enigma, edited by Arthur L. Swift, Jr. (1933). The version
presented here is the revised version from Cohen's, The
Faith of a Liberal (1946).

The advocatus diaboli, as you know, is not a lawyer employed
by the Prince of Darkness. He is a faithful member of the Church
whose duty it is, when it is proposed to canonize a saint, to
search out all the opposing considerations and to state them as
cogently as possible. This wise institution compels the advocates
of canonization to exert themselves to develop arguments vigorous
enough to overcome all objections. In this symposium on religion,
I am asked to serve as advocatus diaboli: to state the Dark
Side so that those who follow may have definite positions to attack
and may thus more fully develop the strength of their case.

While there have not been wanting atheists and other free thinkers
who have attacked religion root and branch, these assailants have
often shared the indiscriminate or fanatical intensity which has
characterized so many upholders of religion. It has therefore been
possible to pass over the argument of men like Voltaire, Bradlaugh,
or Ingersoll, as inaccurate, superficial, and too one-sided. The
truth, however, is that religion is something about which men
generally are passionate; and it is as difficult to be patient with
those who paint its defects as it is to listen attentively to those
who point out our most intimate failings or the shortcoming of
those we love most dearly, of our family or of our country. Indeed,
to most people religion is just a matter of loyalty to the accepted
ways hallowed by our ancestors; and to discuss it at all critically
is just bad taste, very much as if a funeral orator were to treat
us to a psychoanalysis of our lamented friend.

A curious illustration of the confusion resulting from the absence
of a critical discriminating attitude in the discussion of religion
is the fact that the heterodox opponent of the established religion
has often much more real faith than most of its followers. Thus
Theodore Roosevelt was probably representative of Christian America
when he referred to Tom Paine as a "filthy little
atheist." Yet a comparison of their respective writings can
leave little doubt that Paine had far more faith than his contemner
in a personal God, in the immortality of the soul, and in moral
compensation hereafter. But Theodore Roosevelt never said a word
against established religion or the church and so remained
respectable -- though his conception of religion as identical with
such good works as the taking of Panama and the building of the
Canal1 literally ignores the whole spiritual essence of the
historic Christianity which our churches profess. The common
identification of religion with the unquestioning acceptance of
traditional conventions or good manners is shown in the popular
distrust of anyone who thinks about religion seriously enough to
change his religious affiliations or to depart from the religion of
his fathers. Even lower in general esteem are those who think out
a religion for themselves. Thus the Russians say: "The Tatars
received their religion [Mohammedanism] from God like the color of
their skins; but the Molokans are Russians who have invented their
faith."2

The general disinclination to conscientious or scrupulously
logical examination of religious beliefs is shown by the way even
educated people judge religious doctrine by their labels rather
than by their content. Thus we talk about Spinoza as a God-intoxicated man because he used the word "God" and the
language of traditional piety. But those who repeat his opposition
to that anthropomorphic theism which is the essence of all popular
religion, and who do not write nature with a capital N, are just
atheists. Indeed a writer who has made a considerable impression on
our contemporary public by his books on religion identifies the
latter with a belief in Something. What should we have
thought of his doctrine if we merely heard it, or if we had only
one case of type?

One of the effective ways of avoiding any real discussion of
religion or discriminating its darker from its brighter side is to
define or identify it as "our highest aspiration." This is
very much like defining a spouse as the essence of perfection or
our country as the home of the brave and the free. Some particular
religion, like some particular wife or country, may perhaps deserve
the praise. But we must first be able to identify our object before
we can tell whether the praise is entirely deserved. To define
religion as our highest aspiration, and then to speak of
Christianity, Islam, or Judaism as a religion, is obviously to beg
the whole question by a verbal trick of definition.

In the interests of intellectual honesty we must also reject the
identification of religion with the mere sentiment of benevolence
or with altruistic conduct.

This is the favorite vice of our modernists and of scientific
leaders like Millikan who try to harmonize religion with science in
general (not with their own special field). We may dismiss these
harmonizers as plainly ignorant of the history of religion. For to
identify all religion with vague altruism3 rules out not only all
the historic tribal and national religions, Hinduism, and most of
the Old Testament, but also Christianity of the Orthodox, Catholic,
and Fundamentalist-Protestant type. All post-Hellenic cults have
insisted on sacraments like baptism and on the acceptance of dogmas
about the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Fall of Man, the Atonement,
eternal Hell, etc. Worse than that! This "liberal" or
nondogmatic view is logically bound to apply the term
"religious" to philanthropic atheists and Communists who,
in the interests of humanity and to stop the exploitation of the
masses by the clergy, are the avowed enemies of all religion. And
indeed there are many who do speak of Communism as a religion. But
this surely is to cause hopeless confusion. There is no real
liberalism in ignoring the historical meaning of words; and no one
who knows anything of the historical and general use of the word
"religion" can well use it to include atheists like
Shelley or Lenin and exclude men like Torquemada, Calvin, and
Jonathan Edwards. Such "liberalism" does not really
strengthen the case for religion. Consider the vast varieties of
religions ancient and modern. Are they all expressions of our
highest aspirations? Is each one an effort at universal
benevolence? If so, why do they differ? And since they do differ,
and each regards the others as inferior, can they all be true? Nor
is the case improved if we say that each religious group seeks what
is highest or noblest, for there can be no question that error,
ignorance, stupidity, and fanatical prejudice enter into what men
think.

Instead, then, of darkening counsel by beginning with arbitrary
and confusing definitions of religion, let us recognize that the
term "religion" is generally used and understood to apply
to Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, etc., and that these
represent certain forms of organized life in which beliefs about
God and a supernatural realm enter more or less articulately.
Religion is first of all something that makes people do something
when children are born, when they become mature, when they marry,
and when they die. It makes people go to church, sacrifice, fast,
feast, or pray. A religion that does not get so organized or
embodied in life is a mere ghost, the creature of a cultivated
imagination. Generally speaking, people get these habits by social
heredity, according to the community in which they are born. The
beliefs thus involved are more or less tacitly assumed. But such
tacit beliefs do become at times explicit, and when this happens
men cling to the verbal formula with the most amazing intensity and
tenacity. Men are willing to burn others and to be burned
themselves on the question whether they should cross themselves
with one finger or two, or whether God is one person of various
aspects or natures, or three persons of one substance.

Now if we thus view religion as an historic phenomenon in human
life, we are prepared to believe -- from what we know of human
nature and history -- that religion like all other social
institutions has its darker as well as its brighter side.

I. RELIGION STRENGTHENS SUPERSTITION AND HINDERS SCIENCE OR
THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH-SEEKING

Since the days of the Greek philosopher Xenophanes, theistic
religion has been accused of foolish anthropomorphism. And since
Epicurus and Lucretius it has been identified by many thinkers with
superstition. Eighteenth and nineteenth-century writers like
Voltaire, Gibbon, and Condorcet, Lecky, Draper, and A. D. White
have so traced the history of the conflict between scientific
enlightenment and religious obscurantism as to make this point a
commonplace. But the attempt has been made to make it appear that
this conflict is not between religion and science, but between the
latter and theology. This seems to me a cheap and worthless
evasion. In the first place, none of the religions that are in the
field today ever have dispensed or can dispense with all theology.
What would be left today of Christianity, Judaism, or Islam without
a belief in a personal God to whom we can pray? In the second
place, we do not understand the roots of religion if we do not see
that the historic opposition to science has not been a vagary of
wicked theologians but has risen out of the very spirit which has
animated most, if not all, of the religions which have appeared in
history. We must start with the fact that with rare exceptions men
cling to the religion in which they are born and to which they have
been habituated from childhood. We inherit our traditional ritual
with its implicit faith and emotional content almost with our
mother's milk; and we naturally cling to it as passionately as we
do to all things which have thus become part of our being, our
family, our country, or our language. When religious opinion
becomes formulated, it naturally expresses itself in absolute
claims. Doubts are the fruit of reflection. To one brought up in a
Mohammedan village, it would sound blasphemous to say that there
probably is a God, Allah, and that he is probably more benevolent
than malevolent; and that Mohammed has a fairly good claim to be
the most reliable of prophets. Similar considerations hold in the
case of every other simple religious person. But science regards
all established truths (other than the logical methods of proof and
verification) as subject to possible doubt and correction. Consider
the attitude of a simple man or woman to anyone who offers to prove
that we come from an inferior stock, or that our country is
inferior in merit to its traditional rivals. Who can doubt that the
first and most patent reaction will be resentment rather than
intellectual curiosity? And the same is bound to be our attitude as
regards religion, so long as the latter integrates in simple piety
all traditional and habitual loyalties to the sources of our being.
Thus arises the fierce intolerance of religion as contrasted with
the cultivated open-mindedness of science. To religion, agreement
is a practical and emotional necessity, and doubt is a challenge
and an offense. We cannot tolerate those who wish to interfere or
break up the hallowed customs of our group. Science, on the other
hand, is a game in which opposing claims only add zest and
opportunity. If the foundations of Euclidean geometry or Newtonian
physics are suddenly questioned, some individual scientists may
show their human limitations; but science as a whole has its field
widened thereby, great enthusiasm is created for new
investigations, and the innovators are objects of grateful general
homage. Science does not need, therefore, to organize crusades to
kill off heretics or unbelievers. Science, like art, enjoys its own
activity and this enjoyment is not interfered with by anyone who
obstinately refuses to join the game or scoffs at what the
scientist has proved. The scientific banquet is not spoiled by our
neighbors' refusing to enjoy it.

Thus it comes to pass that religion passionately clings to
traditional beliefs which science may overthrow to satisfy its
insatiable curiosity and its desire for logical consistency. The
conflict between religion and science is thus a conflict between
(on the one hand) loyalty to the old and (on the other) morally
neutral curiosity about everything.

Let us glance at some actual forms of superstition that have been
strengthened by religion.

(1) Demoniac Possession. Whatever be our theories as to
the origin of religion, there can be no doubt about the antiquity
and persistence of the belief in disembodied spirits, benevolent
and malevolent; and all existing religions involve the belief in
such supernatural beings, called gods, ghosts, spirits of
ancestors, demons, angels, etc. Organized religion is largely based
on and develops credulity in this domain. It insists on certain
approved ways of conciliating these spirits or obtaining their
favor by some ritual of sacrifices, prayer, incantations, the
wearing of amulets, or the like. Priests are experts in these
rituals and their influence is certainly not to destroy the belief
on which their occupation rests. Consider, for instance, the oracle
at Delphi, based on the belief that the raving priestess was
possessed by the God Apollo who spoke through her. Religious people
like Plato or the Platonic Socrates believed this and held the
oracle in great awe. Yet even contemporaries realized that the
managing priests were manipulating the final answer under the guise
of interpreting the raving utterances of the priestess. The sober
Thucydides went out of his way to remark on the only occasion on
which the oracle guessed right. Similar observations may be made
about the raving prophets mentioned in the Book of Samuel. We find
their analogue today in the dancing dervishes of Islam.

One form of this superstition of demoniac possession plays a
prominent role in the New Testament. The power of Jesus and his
disciples to cast out devils was obviously regarded by the writers
of the Gospels as a chief pillar of the Christian claim. The New
Testament, to be sure, did not originate this ancient theory of the
nature of certain mental aberrations; but its authority has
certainly hindered the effort to dispel this superstitious view of
the cause of insanity and hysteria -- a view that resulted in a
most horrible treatment of the sick.

(2) Witchcraft. The fear of witchcraft is a natural outcome
of the belief in spirits and in the possibility of controlling or
using them. If religion did not originate this superstition, it
certainly did a good deal to strengthen it. Indeed, Protestant as
well as Catholic Christianity at one time bitterly persecuted those
who did not believe in the efficacy of witchcraft. For the writers
of the Bible certainly believed that witches could recall even the
prophets from the dead; and the Mosaic law specifically commanded
that witches should be put to death.4

The effects of this Biblical command were quite horrible. Not only
were thousands burned within a short time at Trèves, but the
torture of those suspected (in order to make them confess) was
perhaps even more frightful. The victims of mere suspicion had
their bones broken, were deprived of all water, and suffered
unmentionable cruelties. Perhaps even worse was the resulting
general insecurity and the terrible feeling of fear and of
distrust. Yet so clear was the Biblical injunction that enlightened
men like More, Casaubon, and Cudworth denounced those who
disbelieved in witchcraft. For to give up the belief in witchcraft
is to give up the infallibility of the Bible.

(3) Magic. Closely related to witchcraft is magic. Recent
writers like Frazer are inclined to draw a sharp distinction
between magic and religion. But though the Church hindered the
progress of physics, chemistry, and medicine by persecuting
magicians,5 the belief that the course of nature could be changed by
invoking supernatural agencies or spirits is common to both
religion and magic. The magician cures you by an incantation,
pronouncing a strange formula; the priest or rabbi does it by a
blessing; the saint does it posthumously to anyone who touches his
relics. The magician brings rain by rubbing a stick, the priest by
a prayer. If a formula or ritual invokes the accepted god and is
performed by the authorized person, it is religion. If the god, the
act, or the agent is not an authorized one, the first is referred to
as a devil, the second as a sacrilege, and the third as a magician.
The Church regarded the pagan deities as demons. Both religion
and magic generally involve the influence of the supernatural --
though the magicians more frequently studied the physical or
medicinal properties of the substances they used. The fetish-worshiper attaches magical potency to stones, but so does the
Bible. Touching the Ark, even with the most worshipful intention,
brings death.6 Christianity frowns on idol worshiping
but it still attaches supernatural power to certain objects like
the cross, relics of saints, etc. Holy water wards off devils.
Miracles are a part of Christian faith and are offered as evidence
of its truth. But the evidence in favor of the Virgin Birth, of the
stopping of the sun and the moon at Ajalon, or of the Resurrection,
etc., cannot support its own weight. A small part of mankind finds
it adequate, and thus only because of the fear of being damned or
anathematized for unbelief. It is inconceivable that an impartial
court would convict anybody on such evidence. In fact, no event
would be considered miraculous if the evidence in its favor were as
cogent as that which makes us believe wonderful but natural
occurrences.

Another religious belief that the progress of science has shown to
be superstition -- i.e., to have no basis in rational evidence -- is
that the rainbow, comets, and other meteorological phenomena are
not natural events but special portents to warn mankind against
sin.7

(4) Opposition to Science. It is not necessary for me to
recount the fight of Christianity against the Copernican astronomy,
against modern geology or biology, or against the scientific
treatment of Biblical history. They have become commonplace, and I
may merely refer to the works of Lecky, Draper, A. D. White, and
Benn. The point to be noted is that the old adherents of religion
did nor want to know the truth, and that their religion did not
encourage them to think it worth while to seek any truth other than
their accepted particular faith. Religious truth is absolute and
its possession makes everything else unimportant. Hence religion
never preaches the duty of critical thought, of searching or
investigating supposed facts.

From this point of view it is interesting to read the testimony of
Bishop Colenso as to what led him to write his book on the
Pentateuch. When he tried to teach Biblical history to the South
African natives, he was amazed at the obvious contradictions which
these simple savages discovered in the various accounts of the
patriarchs. Yet millions of astute and learned Christians had not
noticed these discrepancies.

Consider, for instance, the Biblical statement that the hare chews
the cud. This can easily he tested. Does your orthodox Christian do
that? This disinclination to question things also appears, of
course, elsewhere; but nowhere so emphatically and persistently as
in the field of religion. Believe in the Koran or be damned
forever!

Not only does religion fail to regard critical intelligence and
the search for natural truth as a virtue, but the ideal which it
holds up frequently makes light of truth itself. Even when God lays
down a moral law, He is Himself above the moral law. He sends a
lying spirit to Ahab, and his Church for a long time did not think
a promise to heretics binding. In the fourth century organized
Christianity adopted the view that deceit and lying were virtues if
in the interests of the Church (cf. Mosheim). The duty of
truthfulness is much more exemplified in science than in religion.

In this respect "liberal" modernism seems intellectually much more
corrupting than orthodox Fundamentalism. Confronted by natural
absurdities -- such as the sun and the moon stopping in their course,
or the hare chewing the cud -- the Fundamentalist can still say: "I
believe in the word of the Spirit more than in the evidence offered
by the eyes of my corruptible flesh." This recognizes a clear
conflict; and the intellectual hara-kiri of the Fundamentalist is
a desperate venture that can appeal only to those whose faith is
already beyond human reason or evidence. But the modernist who
gives up the infallibility of the Bible in matters of physics, and
tries to keep it in matters of faith and morals, has to resort to
intellectually more corrupting procedure. By "liberal" and
unhistorical interpretation he tries -- contrary to the maxim of
Jesus -- to pour new wine into old bottles and then pretend that the
result is the ancient wine of moral wisdom.

In any case, religion makes us cling to certain beliefs, and often
corrupts our sense of logical evidence by making us afraid to
regard arguments in favor of religion as inconclusive or to view
arguments against it as at all probative. The will to believe even
contrary to demonstrative evidence, credo quia absurdum, is often
lauded as a religious virtue.

It has often been claimed that the superstitions of religion are
merely the current superstitions of the people who at the time
profess that religion. If this were true, it should only prove that
religion is powerless to stop superstition -- that it is
intellectually parasitic and not creative. But the intimate
connection between religion and supernaturalism, and the passionate
attachment to the old ways which every religion intensifies, cannot
but strengthen superstition and hinder the progress of science
towards the attainment of new truth as to human affairs.. And this
is altogether independent of the personal profit in power,
prestige, or even revenue which leads many in and outside of the
churches to exploit the credulity of the multitude.

II.
RELIGION AS AN ANTI-MORAL FORCE

It is often claimed that religion is the protector of morals and
that the breakdown of the former inevitably leads to breakdown of
the latter. While there may be some correlation or coincidence
between periods of moral change and periods of religious change,
there is no evidence at all for the assumption that the abandonment
of any established religion leads to an enduring decline in
morality. There is more evidence to the contrary. Those who break
away from religion are often among the most high-minded members of
the community. The chaplains of our prisons do not complain of the
prevalence of atheism or lack of religious affiliation among the
criminals to whom they minister, while there certainly has been
uncontested complaint that religious leaders, high priests, popes,
and cardinals have led rapacious and most licentious lives. As
faithful a son of the church as Dante puts popes in Hell, and it
was in an age of general religious faith that Boccaccio put into
the mouth of a Jew the mot that the Church of Rome must be of
divine origin or it could not stand despite such government. But
this is an ungracious task from which we may well turn.

Let us look at the matter more philosophically. What do we mean by
morality? Generally we mean those rules of conduct that appeal to
people as generally conducive to a decent human life. It follows
therefore that, as the conditions of human life change, the content
of wise moral rules must change accordingly. Religion, being
passionate and absolute in its claim, formulates moral rules as
inflexible taboos. It thus prevents needed change and causes
tension and violent reaction. But science, studying the principles
involved, can distinguish the permanent elements of human
organization and safeguard them amidst necessary adjustments to new
situations. It is secular social science and philosophy rather than
religion that have the wisdom to see the necessity of conserving
human values in the very process of facilitating desirable changes.

The absolute character of religious morality has made it emphasize
the sanctions of fear the terrifying consequences of disobedience.
I do not wish to ignore the fact that the greatest religious
teachers have laid more stress on the love of the good for its own
sake. But in the latter respect they have not been different front
such great philosophers as Democritus, Aristotle, or Spinoza, who
regarded morality as its own reward, like the proper playing of a
musical instrument. But the great body of established religions
have emphasized extraneous punishment. In the religion of the Old
Testament, as in that of almost all Oriental and classic Greek and
Roman religions, the punishment meted out to the individual or
people is entirely temporal, and the rewards of virtue are in the
form of prosperity. When people realize that this is not true, that
the wicked do prosper and that, contrary to the pious Psalmist, not
only the righteous but their children are often in want of bread,
they either put the whole thing in the realm of theological mystery
(as in the Book of Job) or else resort to the pious fiction that
the bad man is troubled by his conscience. But the latter is
obviously not true. Only those who are trained by religion to
cultivate their conscience are troubled that way. The bad man
gloats over his evil if he succeeds, and is sorry only if he fails.
For this reason, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have developed
and stressed the doctrine of Hell, of eternal and most terrifying
punishment. But it is doubtful whether the deterrent value of all
these terrors is really large. Living in the presence of a constant
terror does not eliminate carelessness. At best, fear secures only
conformity. The development of enlightened inclination or
disposition depends on educational wisdom and science. Some
religions have talked much about love. But the predominant emphasis
on the motive of fear for the enforcement of absolute commands has
made religious morality develop the intensest cruelty that the
human heart has known.

Religion has made a virtue of cruelty. Bloody sacrifices of human
beings to appease the gods fill the pages of history. In ancient
Mexico we have the wholesale sacrifice of prisoners of war as a
form of the national cultus. In the ancient East we have the
sacrifice of children to Moloch. Even the Greeks were not entirely
free from this religious custom, as the story of the sacrifice of
Iphigenia by her father testifies. Let us note that while the Old
Testament prohibits the ancient Oriental sacrifice of the first-born, it does not deny its efficacy in the case of the King of Moab
(II Kings 3:1) nor is there any revulsion at the readiness with
which Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son Isaac. In India it
was the religious duty of the widow to be burned on the funeral
pyre of her late husband. And while Christianity formally condemned
human sacrifice, it revived it in fact under the guise of burning
heretics. I pass over the many thousands burned by order of the
Inquisition, and the record of the hundreds of people burned by
rulers like Queen Mary for not believing in the Pope or in
transubstantiation. The Protestant Calvin burned the scholarly
Servetus for holding that Jesus was "the son of the eternal God"
rather than "the eternal son of God." And in our own Colonial
America, heresy was a capital offense.8

Cruelty is a much more integral part of religion than most people
nowadays realize. The Mosaic law commands the Israelites, whenever
attacking a city, to kill all the males, and all females who have
known men. The religious force of this is shown when Saul is cursed
and his whole dynasty is destroyed for leaving one prisoner, King
Agag, alive. Consider that tender psalm, "By the rivers of
Babylon." After voicing the pathetic cry "How can we sing the songs
of Jehovah in a foreign land?" it goes on to curse Edom, and ends
"Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against
the rock." Has there been any religious movement to expurgate this from the
religious service of Jews and Christians? Something of the spirit
of this intense hatred for the enemies God (i.e., those not of our
own religion) has invented and developed the terrors of Hell, and
condemned almost all of mankind to suffer them eternally -- all,
that is, except a few members of our own particular religion. Worst
of all, it has regarded these torments as adding to the beatitude
of its saints.9 The doctrine of a loving and all-merciful God
professed by Christianity or Islam has not prevented either one
from preaching and practicing the duty to hate and persecute those
who do not believe. Nay, it has not prevented fierce wars between
diverse sects of these religions, such as the wars between Shiites,
Sunnites, and Wahabites, between Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholics,
and Protestants.

The fierce spirit of war and hatred is not of course entirely due
to religion. But religion has made a duty of hatred. It preached
crusades against Mohammedans and forgave atrocious sins to
encourage indiscriminate slaughter of Greek Orthodox as well as of
Mohammedan populations. It also preached crusades against
Albigenses, Waldenses, and Hussite Bohemians. And what is more
heartrending than the bloody wars between the two branches of the
Hussites over the question of the communion in two kinds? This war
desolated and ruined Bohemia.

The Inquisition is fortunately now a matter of the past. Let us
not forget however, that the Church has not abandoned its right and
duty to exterminate heretics; and it will doubtless perform its
duty when conditions permit it. Spanish and Portuguese saints have
expressed deep religious ardor in burning heretics.10 Ingenuity in
inventing means of torture was the outcome of religious zeal on the
part of the pious clergy who belonged to the Office of the Holy
Inquisition.

The essential cruelty of religious morality shows itself in the
peculiar fervor with which Protestant Puritans hate to see anyone
enjoy himself on Sunday. Our "Blue Sunday" legislation is directed
against the most innocent kinds of enjoyment against open-air games
like baseball, concerts, or theatrical plays. And while there may
be some serious social considerations in favor of liquor
prohibition there is little doubt that an element of sadism, a
hatred of seeing others enjoying beer or wine, is one of the
motives which actuate religious fanatics. For that is in the great
historic tradition of the Protestant Church.

Cruel persecution and intolerance are not accidents but flow out
of the very essence of religion, namely, its absolute claims. So
long as each religion claims to have absolute revealed truth, all
other religions are sinful errors. Despite the fact that some
religions speak eloquently of universal brotherhood, they have
always in fact divided mankind into sects, while science has united
them into one community, which desires to profit by enlightenment.
Even when a religion like Christianity or Islam sweeps over diverse
peoples and temporarily unites them into one its passionate nature
inevitably leads to the development of sects and heresies. There is
no drearier chapter in the history of human misery
than the unusually bloody internecine religious or sectarian wars
which have drenched in blood so much of Europe, Northern Africa,
and Western Asia.

Even in our own day, a common religion of Christian love does not
prevent war between Christian nations. Rather do the churches
encourage the warlike spirit and pray for victory. If the conduct
among the various creeds of Christianity in our own country is not
so bloody, it is not because the spirit of intolerance has
disappeared. The Ku Klux Klan and the incidents of our presidential
campaign in 1928 are sufficient indications to the contrary. The
disappearance of religious persecution is rather due to the fact
that those who would persecute do not any longer have adequate
power. It is the growth of science, making possible free
intercourse among different peoples which has led to that
liberation which abolished the Inquisition and has made it possible
for freethinkers to express their views without losing their civic
and political rights.

The complacent assumption which identifies religion with higher
morality ignores the historic fact that there is not a single
loathsome human practice that has not at some time or other been
regarded as a religious duty. I have already mentioned the breaking
of promises to heretics. But assassination and thuggery (as the
words themselves indicate), sacred prostitution (in Babylonia and
India), diverse forms of self-torture, and the verminous
uncleanliness of saints like St. Thomas a Becket, have all been part of
religion. The religious conception of morality has been a
legalistic one. Moral rules are the commands of the gods. But the
latter are sovereigns and not themselves subject to the rules which
they lay down for others according to their own sweet wills.

In all religions, the gods have been viewed as subject to
flattery. They can be persuaded to change their minds by sacrifices
and prayers. A god who responds to the prayers of the vast majority
of people cannot be on a much higher moral plane than those who
address him. And what would become of religion, to the majority, if
prayers and sacrifices were cut out?

It is doubtless true that some
of the noblest moral maxims have been expressed by religious
teachers -- the Buddha, the Hebrew prophets, Jesus, and Mohammed.
But in organized religion, these maxims have played but an
ornamental part. How much of the profound disillusion and
cultivated resignation of Prince Gautama is to be found in the
daily practice of the Bhikhus or beggar monks, or the common ritual
of prayer-wheels and talismanic statuettes of the Buddha? This,
however, is too long a theme. It would require an examination of
the actual practices of the various religions which would exhaust
many hours.

Let me, however, consider one point. It is often alleged that the
later Hebrew prophets beginning with Amos were the first to
introduce a strictly moral conception of God. "An honest God's the
noblest work of man." Now it is true that men like Amos, Isaiah,
and Micah did among other themes preach social righteousness,
feeding the widow and orphan, rather than the national cultus of
Sabbaths, holy days, and sacrifices. But will anyone dare to assert
that the feeding of widows and orphans, and similar deeds of mercy,
constitute the distinguishing essence of the Jewish religion?
Surely others before and after the prophets believed and practiced
such admirable commandments. Some of the philosophers even ventured
to discuss and generalize them so that we might have some clew as
to when a given act is just and merciful, and when it is not. Yet
if a Greek or a Persian should "do justice, love mercy, and walk
humbly with God" (the last defined, let us say, in Aristotelian or
Spinozistic terms), would he be regarded as a Jew in religion?
Surely not so much as one who should be rather negligent in regard
to justice and mercy, but should practice circumcision and observe
the dietary laws, the laws of the Sabbath and of the Day of
Atonement, etc. So also a Persian who in fact believed in the
ethical commands of Jesus would not be considered a Christian in
religion if he had not been baptized into any church, and did not
subscribe to the doctrine of the Trinity or the Virgin Birth.
Admirable moral practices on the part of a Hindu or an Inca would
not make either of them a Christian. One's religion is judged by
the organized group or church of which he is a member. My
revered teacher Josiah Royce has justly identified religion, and
especially Christianity, with communal life.

In the struggle for social justice, what has been the actual
influence of religion? Here the grandiose claims of religious
apologists are sadly belied by historic facts. The frequent claim
that Christianity abolished slavery has nothing but pious wishes
to support it. Indeed, in our own country, the clergy of the South
was vigorously eloquent in defense of slavery as a divine
institution. Nor was it the Church that was responsible for the
initiation of the factory legislation that mitigated the atrocious
exploitation of human beings in mines and mills. It was not the
Church that initiated the movement to organize workmen for mutual
support and defense, or that originated the effort to abolish
factual slavery when men where paid in orders on company stores -- a
practice that has prevailed in some of our own states. The Church
has generally been on the side of the powerful classes who have
supported it -- royalists in France, landowners in England, the
scientific or exploiting class in Mexico, etc. Here and there some
religious leader or group has shown sympathy with the oppressed;
but the Church as a whole has property interests which affiliate it
with those in power.

III. RELIGION AND THE EMOTIONAL
LIFE

Kant has regarded religion as concerned with the great question of
What We Can (ultimately) Hope For. In so far as hopes are
resolutions, they are irrefutable by logical arguments. For
arguments can only appeal to accepted premises. But hopes may be
illusory or ill-founded -- they may even attach to what is
demonstrably impossible. Such, in the light of modern science, is
the hope of the actual resurrection of the body. But what is more
important is that many of the hopes that religion has held out to
men e.g., the Mohammedan heaven -- are now seen as thoroughly
unworthy and even sordid.

Does religion enrich the emotional life? It is customary to speak
of religion as if it were always a consolation to the bereaved and
a hope in times of trial and distress. Doubtless it often is so.
Let us not forget, however, the great fact that religion is based
on fear and promotes it. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of
religious wisdom, and, while the Lord is sometimes merciful, he is
also a God of Vengeance, visiting the sins of the fathers upon the
children to the third and fourth generations. The fires of Hell or
other forms of divine punishment are a source of real fear whenever
and wherever religion has a powerful grip on people generally.
Indeed, when the belief in the Devil or evil gods tends to wane,
the belief in a personal god tends to evaporate.

The gods are jealous of human happiness. Schiller has portrayed
this in The Ring of Polycrates, following the good authority
of Herodotus and others. When Jehovah is angry at David, he sends
a plague killing seventy thousand innocent Israelites. Indeed,
throughout the books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings, we have numerous
instances of Jehovah's action being above the moral law. In the
Book of Job the question is put directly: "Who is man that he dare
pass judgment on God's ways?" God's ways are beyond us and nothing
is secure for us.

It is the keen dread of the gods and their wanton interference in
human affairs that has made men like Lucretius hail the Epicurean
joy as a great emancipation from continual fear.

Many of the supposedly spiritual comforts of religion are
meretricious. The great elation which people experience when they
"get religion" is often a morally disintegrating force, as all
forms of irrational or uncontrolled excitement are likely to be. We
can see this effect in the religious orgies of Semitic times,
euphemistically referred to as "rejoicing before the Lord." And we
have ample records in America of the breakdown of morale as a
result of the hysteria engendered by ignorant revivalist preachers,
leading at times to sexual frenzies. Nor is this a new note in
religion. Among the Mohammedans, where the sex element is
rigorously removed from religious ritual, frenzies take the form of
dervish dancing, which results in complete loss of self-control.
Such organized hysteria is to be found in all religions.

No one can read religious literature without being struck by the
abject terror that the notion of sin has aroused in human
consciousness. Religious sin is not something that mortal man can
avoid. It is a terrible poison which infects the air we breathe and
every fiber of our flesh and blood. For our very existence in the
flesh is sinful. How can we avoid this body of death and
corruption? This is the terrible cry which rings through the ages
in the penitential prayers of the Assyro-Babylonians, Buddhists,
Hebrews, medieval monks, and Calvinistic preachers.

Religion has encouraged men to dwell on the torments of Hell and
to inflict on themselves diverse spiritual agonies (see The
Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius Loyola).

Religion breeds terrors of all sorts. Who, for instance, would
worry about the appearance of Halley's Comet if pious readers of
the Bible did not conclude that this was a warning from heaven and
a portent of evil to come? Yet Europe suffered the most agonizing
terror, the veriest paroxysm of fear, because of it. This fear
strengthened ecclesiastical tyranny and hatred against unbelievers
when the pope himself exorcised that distressing sign in the sky.

Consider the terrors which the religious belief in demons and
their control of earthly affairs has aroused in the daily lives of
simple-minded men and women. We think it cruel to frighten children
by threats of the "bogey man"; yet religion has systematically
frightened most of mankind through the doctrine of demons, who have
the power to make us sin when we do not know it and to torture us at
their evil pleasure. What greater terror can there be than the fear
of having witchcraft or even a powerful prayer or curse directed
against you by some unsuspected enemy? Perhaps the fear of not
believing in miracles which seem to us impossible and thus being
guilty of mortal heresy is not now widespread. But it is of the
essence of religious thought even today that, unless you can get
yourself to believe certain inherently improbable propositions, you
must abandon all hope. And how can anyone be free from all doubts
when opposed views are actively expressed by some of our most
respected fellow men?

Consider also the tragedy of enforcing monastic celibacy on young
people because their parents promised them to the Church. Or
consider, on the other hand, the opposite harms to family life
resulting from the Church's opposition to birth control, no matter
how rationally indicated by hygiene and common decency. Whatever
motivates the Church's opposition, the source of its strength on
this point is the old religious taboo against touching the gates of
life and death, which science daily disregards. This taboo shows itself
in the prohibition of any form of euthanasia or suicide, no matter
how hideous or tortured life becomes. Even supposedly liberal
clergymen are ready with unfeeling arrogance to brand as a coward
anyone unfortunate enough to find life unbearable. But despite the
depth of this religious fear of touching the gates of life and
death, we do not or cannot carry it out consistently. We do control
the birth rate and the death rate of any community by economic
sanitary and political measures. By excluding the Chinese from our
own country and confining them to their inadequate lands we force
many of them into starvation. The Church does not condemn this way
of controlling the birth or death rate. It does not even condemn
the wholesale death-dealing and birth-prevention of war.

While religion has encouraged certain feasts and holidays, it has
not been the active friend of that more steady enjoyment of life
which comes from developing the industrial and the fine arts. The
Old Testament and the Koran, with their prohibition against graven
images, have repressed sculpture and representative painting; and
the record of the Christian Church for the two thousand years of
its existence hardly supports the contention that it has been the
mother and patroness of the fine arts. The monasteries, to be sure,
developed the art of illuminating manuscripts, and many magnificent
structures were erected by bishops and popes like Leo X, who in
their personal lives openly flouted the Christian religion. But
when did religion or church do anything to nurse the arts and bring
them into the homes of the great mass of people? Censorship rather
than active encouragement has been the Church's attitude.

In regard to the terrors as well as the superstitions and
immoralities of religion, it will not do to urge that they are due
only to the imperfections of the men who professed the various
religions. If religion cannot restrain evil, it cannot claim
effective power for good. In fact, however, the evidence indicates
that religion has been effective for evil. It might be urged that
certain terrors have likewise been aroused by popular science --
e.g., the needless terrors of germs, the absurd and devastating
popular theories of diet. etc. But the latter are readily
corrigible. Indeed it is the essence of science to correct the errors
which it may originate. Religion cannot so readily confess error,
and the terrors with which it surrounds the notion of sin are felt with a
fatality and an intensity from which science and art are free.

I have spoken of the dark side of religion and have thus
implied that there is another side. But if this implication puts me
out of the class of those who are unqualified opponents of all that
has been called religion, I do not wish to suggest that I am merely
an advocate, or that I have any doubts as to the justice of the
arguments that I have advanced. Doubtless some of my arguments may
turn out to be erroneous, but at present I hold them all in good
faith. I believe that this dark side of religion is a reality, and
it is my duty on this occasion to let those who follow me do
justice to the other side. But if what I have said has any merit,
those who wish to state the bright side of religion must take
account of and not ignore the realities which I have tried to
indicate. This means that the defense of religion must he stated in
a spirit of sober regard for truth, and not as a more or less
complacent apology for beliefs which we are determined not to
abandon. Anyone can, by assuming his faith to be the truth, argue
from it more or less plausibly and entirely to his own
satisfaction. But that is seldom illuminating or strengthening. The
real case for religion must show compelling reasons why, despite
the truths that I have sought to display, men who do not believe in
religion should change their views. If this be so, we must reject
such apologies for religion as Balfour's Foundations of Belief. One
who accepts the Anglican Church may regard such a book as a
sufficient defense. But in all essentials it is a subtle and
urbane, but none the less complacent, begging of all the serious
questions in the case. For similar reasons also I think we must
reject the apology for religion advanced by my revered and beloved
teacher William James.

Let us take up his famous essay on
"The Will To Believe." Consider in the first place his argument
that science (which is organized reason) is inapplicable in the
realm of religion because to compare values or worths "we must
consult not science but what Pascal calls our heart.1 But if it were
true that science and reason have no force in defense of religion,
why argue at all? Why all these elaborate reasons in defense of
religion? Is it not because the arguments of men like Voltaire and
Huxley did have influence that men like De Maistre and James tried
to answer them? Who, the latter ask, ever heard of anyone's
changing his religion because of an argument? It is not necessary
for me to give a list of instances from my own knowledge. Let us
admit that few men confess themselves defeated or change their
views in the course of any one argument. Does this prove that
arguments have no effect? Do not arguments which at first they
professed to find unconvincing? The fact is that men do argue about
religion, and it is fatuous for those who argue on one side to try
also to discredit all rational arguments. It seems more like
childish weakness to kick against a game or its rules when you are
losing in it. And it is to the great credit of the Catholic Church
that it has categorically condemned fideism or the efforts to
eliminate reason from religion. Skepticism against reason is not a
real or enduring protection to religion. Its poison, like that of
the Nessus shirt, finally destroys the faith that puts it on.
Genuine faith in the truth is confident that it can prove itself to
universal reason.

Let us look at the matter a little closer.

James argues that questions of belief are decided by our will. Now
it is true that one can say: "I do not wish to argue. I want to
continue in the belief that I have." But is not the one who says
this already conscious of a certain weakness in his faith which
might well be the beginning of its disintegration? The man who has
a robust faith in his friend does not say, "I want to believe that
he is honest," but "I know that he is honest, and any doubt about
it is demonstrably false or unreasonable." To be willing to put
your case and its evidence before the count of reason is to show
real confidence in it.

But James argues that certain things are beloved not on the basis
of rational or scientific weighing of evidence but on the
compulsion of our passional nature. This is true. But reflection
may ease the passional compulsion. And why not encourage such
reflection?

The history of the last few generations has shown that many have
lost their faith in Christianity because of reflection induced by
Darwinism. Reflection on the inconsistencies of the Mosaic
chronology and cosmology has shown that these do not differ from
other mythologies; and this has destroyed the belief of many in the
plenary inspiration of the Bible. It is therefore always possible
to ask: Shall I believe a given religious proposition as the
absolute truth or shall I suspend final decision until I have
further evidence? I must go to church or stay out. But I may do the
latter at least without hiding from myself the inadequacy of my
knowledge or of the evidence. In politics I vote for X or Y without
necessarily getting myself into the belief that my act is anything
more than a choice of probabilities. I say: Better vote for X than
Y; although if I knew more (for which there is no time) I might
vote the other way. In science I choose on the basis of all the
available evidence but expressly reserve the possibility that
future evidence may make me change my view. It is difficult to make
such reservations within any religious system. But it is possible
to remain permanently skeptical or agnostic with regard to religion
itself and its absolute claims.

The momentous character of the choice in regard to religion may be
dissolved by reflection which develops detachment or what James
calls lightheartedness. What is the difference between believing in
one religion or in another or in none? A realization of the endless
variety of religious creeds of the great diversity of beliefs that
different people hold to be essential to our salvation readily
liberates us from the compulsion to believe in every Mullah that
comes along or else fear eternal damnation. James draws a sharp
distinction between a living and a nonliving issue. To him I
suppose the question of whether to accept Judaism, Islam, or Buddhism
was not a living one. But the question whether to investigate so-called psychical phenomena as proofs of immortality was a living
one. But surely reflection may change the situation and a student
of religion may come to feel that James's choice was arbitrary and
untenable.

The intensification of the feeling that religious issues are
important comes about through the assumption that my eternal
salvation depends upon my present choice or -- at most -- on what I
do during the few moments of my earthly career. There is remarkably
little evidence for this assumption if our life is eternal we may
have had more chances before and we may have more later. Why assume
that the whole of an endless life is determined by an infinitesimal
part of it? From this point of view men like Jonathan Edwards to
whom eternal Hell is always present and who makes an intense
religious issue out of every bite of food, appears to be just
unbalanced, and in need of more play in the sunshine and fresh air
and perhaps a little more sleep. I mention Jonathan Edwards because
his life and teachings enable us to turn the tables on religion by
what James regards as the great pragmatic argument in its favor.
Accept it, James says, and you will be better off at once. As most
religions condemn forever those who do not follow them, it is as
risky to accept any one as none at all. And it is possible to take
the view that they are all a little bit ungracious, too intense,
and too sure of what in our uncertain life cannot be proved. Let us
better leave them all alone and console ourselves with the
hypothesis -- a not altogether impossible one -- that the starry
universe and whatever gods there be do not worry about us at all,
and will not resent our enjoying whatever humane and enlightened
comfort and whatever vision of truth and beauty our world offers
us. Let us cultivate our little garden. The pretended certainties
of religion do not really offer much more. This is of course not a
refutation of religion, or of the necessity which reflective minds
find to grapple with it. But it indicates that there may be more
wisdom and courage as well as more faith in honest doubt than in
most of the creeds.